


To Follow You Softly

by hedgerowhag



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6296623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children break through the dividing doors – a boy and a girl – and run the length of the carriage bumping into the luggage and tripping over baskets and plastic bags. Even as they fall and old women send them stinging looks they run and laugh. They shout in a foreign language – Danish it seems – as they push each other against the seats in a violent game of tag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Follow You Softly

**Author's Note:**

> written purely for self-indulgence. based on a train journey from a couple of years back  
> purposely ambiguous/minimal language  
> title taken from 'tiger mountain peasant song' by fleet foxes. it's a horrible song, dont listen to it  
> i should've made 3 more drafts, but i got lazy, sue my sorry ass

A train departs Saint Petersburg for Vyborg at 7:06pm – no delays. The people refuse to settle, impatient to leave, shuffling through the train carriages even as the journey begins. The city blurs: the pastel arches and the white pillars, the running wires of the trams, the coughing buses and taxis. The air shakes with the last heat of the summer’s falling day.

The people begin to reshuffle again when they run the line of villages. The summer houses are hidden behind overgrown hedges and bowing birch trees. Tall fences stand in the uncut grass and thick telephone wires run through the red pine trees.

They come to a brief pause, an interval before the long run begins.

People leave and others join: natives, elderly women in floral scarves, handling baskets covered in rags and plastic bags; tourists and backpackers in sweat stained clothes with dirt scuffed bags that overweight them; commuting locals with briefcases and suits, tired loners in their corners. Their language is a blur — Russian, French, English, Finnish, Norwegian — they speak in unity, there is no border.

By a carriage door sits a young man, his head bowed in a doze, pressed against the window frame. He had won the bracket of seats to himself. Under his feet he keeps his backpack propped, the straps tangled around his ankles

When they begin to pass the border of the villages the light is a yellow gold peering through the woods. The birch and hazel envelops around the tracks, the trees as thin as reeds. Small huts glimpse through the thickets, fenced gardens and broken asphalt roads. Then the woods swarm around them again, the bone white birches and ferns.

Children break through the dividing doors — a boy and a girl — and run the length of the carriage bumping into the luggage and tripping over baskets and plastic bags. Even as they fall and old women send them stinging looks they run and laugh. They shout in a foreign language — Danish it seems — as they push each other against the seats in a violent game of tag.

The lone young man looks up when the children crash into his seat, kicking at each other, laughing.

A worried mother appears through the doors and ushers the children away, her long golden hair curtaining the boy and girl who laugh and pull at her skirts.

It doesn’t take them long to return. A tall man is in tow with the children —their father maybe, but his hair is dark while theirs is fair. He joins in their games, grabbing for the children as they laugh and squirm.

Sound seeps in as the door opens to the adjoining carriage. Voices of strangers, thump of bags and feet. They disappear with the _clang_ of the closing door. The children are gone. 

Carts selling food and drink pass by, bored women call out to the passengers. The red pines rise around the train. There are gaps of planes where swamps filled with rotting wood and brambles swallow around the trees, untouched by human feet for decades. Swarms of mosquitos dance in the gaps where the evening sunlight beams through the pines.

The young man does not notice how the children pass again.

The train goes on. The blue haze meets the gold. The evening falls.

The carriage door opens the two children are pushed inside by a man who scolds them with brief words. He different to the previous that chased them; He is shorter and his blond long hair is pulled into a braid, his eyes are blue. The man directs the children to the seat opposite the lone traveller.

“I hope we’re not disturbing you,” says the man, the Russian is awkward on his tongue. The children pull at each other, refusing to settle.

The younger man tries not to grin when he replies in Danish, “Of course not.”

The children briefly gawk at him before turning back to their squabbling. The _father_ smiles and sits opposite the young man.

The blond man reaches across the gap between him and the stranger, “Ragnar,” he introduces himself.

The younger reaches back, “Athelstan.” They are both grinning as their hands briefly clasp. The moment is broken when the children fall into a squabble: the boy has shoved his sister too harshly against the window, she cries out and kicks her brother in turn.

“Bjorn!” hisses the father and clips his son on the ear, “behave yourself.” The young boy only huffs and slumps against his seat.

“Why can’t we sit with mum?” demands Bjorn, “Ubbe and Rollo are allowed to stay.”

“Because, Ubbe is asleep and your uncle doesn’t bother anyone when your mother and Aslaug try to rest,” Ragnar flicks the boy, “unlike some.”

The boy grumbles, sending stinging glances to the stranger who watches the children with a smile. Eventually, the brother and sister settle, leaning against each other.

“So, who are you?” asks the father, “a student pursuing the dream of travelling the world?”

Athelstan stares for a moment, eyes fixed on the stranger, “I was a teacher, actually,” his tongue sleep addled.

“ _Was_?”

“I don’t know who I will be when I come back. What about you?”

“Who am I?” Ragnar laughs, “I don’t know yet.”

The conversation bows in and out, taking the men from this to that.

As the words drawl out Ragnar stands and asks Athelstan to mind the children — only for a moment. He leaves before Athelstan responds. When he looks away from the shuttering door he finds one of the children is not asleep. The boy looks at him with narrowed eyes, sneering. 

In the silence Athelstan looks to the window, his tired reflection stares back.

In the east, a pink haze lines the horizon while in the west the sky is yellow – like lemons, mangos and oranges, a thick citrus swirl of colour. In the middle meets the blue. The moon is a pale disc. There are no clouds to hide that white face. A line of red is streaked by a passing plane.

Ragnar returns, cold air trails him through the door. The children have slumped against each other. The girl has her head resting on the shoulder of her brother, his cheek is pressed against her hair.

The speed of the train is beginning to drop.  

There are no houses, no roads, no platform from which to get on and off. The people speak hurriedly amongst each other, eyes flashing down the carriage as they looked for an explanation.

There is an announcement: “Only a slight delay”, “maybe an hour” — it goes unsaid. They don’t know what’s wrong yet. But they are sure it will be sorted out soon.

Without the engine's hum the train is too quiet, the voices are too stark — feet shuffling, people murmuring, the soft trill of the slav tones.

Athelstan and Ragnar share a look. One of the children mutters sleepily, but their father hushes them, “everything is okay, go back to sleep.”

The passengers try to settle down, wait it out. Some haven’t even noticed the pause; elderly hikers sleep, faces drooping under their caps, arms crossed over the chests. Backpackers lean against each other as they fall into a doze. A child demands their mother for answers, their blubbering voice rising in the silence.

The sun is almost gone and the moon is as yellow as gold. The pines are red as blood, their canopies black and motionless.

Twenty minutes stretch into forty and some have decided to get off the train and walk along the rails to stretch their legs. The train has become silent as people leave while others sleep.

Ragnar is rubbing sleep out of his eyes, getting restless in the motionless silence. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and after a moment he gets up. Looking back, he motions for Athelstan to follow.

“What?”

“Come with me.”

“But—,” the young man looks to the children.

“They will sleep.”

The two men leave the carriage. There is darkness in the joint between two compartments, sealed silence – there is only their breathing, soft footsteps as the metal groans.

Athelstan looks through the window of the adjoining door and inside sees a reflection of the scene they had just left.

There is a couple sat leaning against each other, two women with long blond hair, pressed together from shoulder to thigh. One is tall, her skin fair and hair like dirty gold. She sleeps. The other is tanned by the sun, her hair washed of colour. Her eyes are attentive as she speaks to someone Athelstan cannot see. Their hands are clasped together.

The darker woman looks to the door, her sharp eyes caught on Athelstan. Her features twisted into sharp angles.

Behind Athelstan, Ragnar leans to look through the window, a hand raised in a wave. The woman’s anger falls from her face, her eyes are mellow.

“Isn’t it funny,” Ragnar says as he opens the door out of the train, “how they both left me for each other.” The cool air fills the compartment, a swallow of clarity.

Seeing the blanched look on the young man’s face, Ragnar explains, “I wasn’t with them at the same time, though I did propose the idea,” he laughs, “I was married to them. Lagertha first, then Aslaug.”

“Are you angry?” asks Athelstan, “that they left.”

Ragnar takes the step from the train, his feet landing on the soft grass and sparse gravel. He offers a hand to Athelstan. “Angry? No. Now I understand I can’t be a good husband, or a good father.”

Athelstan takes his hand and follows Ragnar from the train. They stand side by side, hands still held.

The sky is a dark navy blue and on the west lingers a halo of dirty orange, it’s barely seen through the black pines. Sparse light lines the trees, glancing off the still pools of swamp water. Stars dot the darkening dome, creeping into view. Without the lights of the city — the streetlights and the car headlamps — they open up in their vast belt, spanning in the night haze.

Their hands break apart. Though the summer warmth lingers the cold is growing. Athelstan shivers and pulls on the hood of his jacket. But Ragnar doesn’t seem cold though in the t-shirt that he wears his arms are exposed. He doesn’t even shiver.

“Where do you come from?” Ragnar abruptly asks. His smile catches the light falling from the windows of the carriages.

“England.”

“You are far from home.”

“And you?”

“Far from Denmark, yes, but not home,” Ragnar walks closer to Athelstan and he feels so small next to this stranger, this man with clever eyes and strange words. “I find comfort in travel,” Ragnar explains and his hand feel so large and warm on Athelstan’s wrist. He didn’t even notice how it came to rest there.

“And you, what do you find comfort in?” the stranger asks as his hand travels under the sleeve of Athelstan’s jacket, his fingers pressing against the soft white skin pulled over fragile bone. “Do you want me to let go of you?”

“I—I don’t know,” Athelstan stutters.

Ragnar’s touch leaves him anyway, but his eyes stay on the younger man. “You should come with us, when we arrive in Vyborg.”

“Where will you go?”

“To visit a friend, then to Finland and Norway. You are welcome with us if you wish.”

Athelstan says nothing, he looks at his wrist as if it has been burned. When Ragnar reaches again Athelstan snatches back his hand.

Voices pass through the train. They are calling back the passengers. The engines are returning to their roar.

When Athelstan turns back, Ragnar is gone. He sees him climbing back onto the train, the flash of his back in the moonlight. Athelstan follows, trying to keep pace, but he can’t.

He walks into the carriage and sees Ragnar wake his children. They stumble from the seat bleary eyed, guided by their father from the carriage. They ignore Athelstan as they leave and he looks back, standing there until he is shoved away.

He doesn’t sleep as the journey passes, watching black viscous ink of the night. His face is in the liquid, a tired sight with bruised eyes and dirty hair. Clothes seem to barely fit though nothing has changed.

Voices are lost as the train rattles over its path. There is nothing to see, nothing to hear, only sleep as the long run comes to an end.

At the station the passengers climb out yawning, barely standing as they lumber with their bags and children. They march through the station complex, fumbling for the tickets as the guards eye them. Outside they spill, struggling to orientate themselves before beginning the trudge.

Athelstan stands alone steps of the station; he hadn’t planned further than this.

The sun is gone, the night is black around the arrivals and the stars are smudged by the pollution that rises from the small city. The carpark is empty and the streets are clearing.

The headlamps of a car flash across the entrance of the railway station. A second set follows. The leading car jerks to a stop, the engine continues to rumble, joined by the second.

There a voices. Shouts of greeting and welcome. A family walks to the cars: two women, one holding a baby to her chest, two men hauling the luggage and two children ambling around them, too tired to return to their games. A lanky man stands from one of the cars and embraces each of the arrivals in turn, poking the children with equal excitement.

As the travellers begin to load the cars, Athelstan turns away, a bitter taste rising at the back of his throat.

Someone tugs on his sleeve and when Athelstan looks he sees the boy that played with his sister too harshly. He is huddled under a coat that is too large for him.

“My dad wants you to stop looking so pathetic,” Bjorn explains, “and you to come with us.”

“Is that what you also want?”

Bjorn shrugs and pulls on Athelstan’s sleeve.

 

The wind is a shiver crossing from the Baltic sea, carrying the taste of salt and smell of rotting debris. The moonlight races across the ripples, a pale outline of the world. On the left, the castle of Vyborg rises, a pale tower with a green dome circled by dark walls, washed of colour in the black ink of the night.

Helga’s voice is joyful patter as she speaks to Ragnar, her attention between him and the road. The headlamps of the car search across the road, scattering the beams across the bridge that they cross.

Gyda’s face is glowing in the light of the phone screen, the fleeting colours flashing across her skin, painting her smiling cheeks in pale blue hues. Her brother nudges at her elbow as he attempts to distract Gyda from the game, but she only grins and pushes back.

Sometime amid their fussing the children fall into laughter, but their father hushes them because beside them Athelstan is sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> trying mighty hard to ignore the character development of s4 (but honestly, do you people even understand how much i want to burn every detail of s4 out of my memory?)
> 
> my existence is also available on [ tumblr](http://beeeeebeeee.tumblr.com/)


End file.
